Khaberni - "Apple" faces French legal action over voice recordings made and shared by the voice assistant "Siri" with a group of company contractors, according to a "Bloomberg" report.
The company can record audio clips of conversations users have with "Siri" and retain them for up to two years, without needing to alert the user each time it does this.
It justifies that these recordings are necessary to improve the quality of "Siri" and to ensure its services function effectively, hence it relies on a group of external contractors to listen to these conversations and evaluate the outcomes.
The report indicates that this investigation is among a series of measures taken by the French government against giant American tech companies, including a range of monopoly and digital service tax cases.
It is noteworthy that this investigation began following a complaint filed by Thomas Le Boniec, a former contractor with "Apple" for analyzing audio clips from "Siri." He revealed that they had listened to a number of user-specific audio clips containing sensitive information, including audio recordings of cancer patients.
For its part, "Apple" states that it only retains users' voice recordings if they explicitly agree to this to help improve "Siri". It adds that these recordings are only used to enhance "Siri," without any other uses, according to a "Bloomberg" report.
"Apple" is trying to improve "Siri" as much as possible and make it competitive amid the spread of personal assistant tools enhanced with artificial intelligence, which is something "Apple" was slow to introduce.
Separate reports indicate that the company intends to release an enhanced version of "Siri" by next March, as this version will possess greater capabilities and can fully control the phone.
